Boost your Developer Portfolio with GitHub Pages and Lighthouse
As a developer, your portfolio is one of your most powerful tools for showcasing your skills, experience, and the quality of your work to potential employers. An effective portfolio highlights your best projects, demonstrates your mastery of different technologies, and helps you stand out in a sea of other candidates vying for the same jobs.
But it‘s not enough to simply throw your projects together on a generic template site. Your portfolio itself should be an impressive piece of work—fast, functional, and following development best practices. This is where GitHub Pages and Lighthouse come in.
In this guide, I‘ll show you how to leverage these free tools to build a high-performance portfolio that wows recruiters and boosts your career prospects. As a seasoned full-stack developer, I‘ve fine-tuned this process to create my own portfolio site that consistently scores high on Lighthouse audits and has helped me land top job offers.
Why Use GitHub Pages for Your Portfolio
GitHub Pages is a free hosting service that allows you to deploy a website directly from a repository on GitHub. Here are a few key benefits of using GitHub Pages for your portfolio:
- It‘s completely free, with no hosting costs
- Setup is quick and easy, even if you‘re new to web development
- You get a professional-looking github.io URL for your site
- It integrates seamlessly with version control via Git
- Support for custom domains if you want to use your own URL
Best of all, you have complete control over the content, appearance, and functionality of your site. You‘re not constrained by the limitations of a platform like WordPress or Squarespace. With GitHub Pages, the customization possibilities are endless.
Introducing Google Lighthouse
Google Lighthouse is a powerful open-source auditing tool for improving the quality of web pages. It runs a series of tests on a given URL and generates a report with scores for five key metrics:
- Performance
- Accessibility
- Best Practices
- SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
- Progressive Web App
A high Lighthouse score is not just about bragging rights. It has tangible benefits for the success of your portfolio site:
- Improved page load speeds and overall performance
- Better accessibility for users with disabilities
- Adherence to development best practices and web standards
- Optimized SEO to help your site rank higher in search results
- Support for installing your site as a Progressive Web App
Running Lighthouse audits and implementing the recommended changes is a great way to ensure your portfolio is high-quality, user-friendly, and optimized for both human visitors and search engine bots. And again, it‘s completely free!
Setting Up Your GitHub Pages Portfolio
Now that you understand the benefits, let‘s walk through the process of setting up your portfolio on GitHub Pages and running your first Lighthouse audit.
Step 1: Create a New Repository
Start by creating a new repository on GitHub with a name that follows this format:
username.github.io
Replace "username" with your actual GitHub username. For example, my portfolio repository is named:
danewesolko.github.io
This naming convention is important, as it tells GitHub Pages that this repository should be published as a website.
Step 2: Clone the Repository Locally
Next, clone your newly created repository to your local machine using the command line or GitHub Desktop app. For example:
git clone https://github.com/username/username.github.io.git
Step 3: Add Your Portfolio Files
Inside the local directory for the cloned repository, create the following files:
- index.html
- styles.css
- script.js
- README.md
These will serve as the foundation for your portfolio site. The HTML file is the main page content, the CSS file is for styling, and the JavaScript file is for any interactive functionality you want to add. The README file is a text document for project info.
Here‘s a basic template for your index.html to get started:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<nav>
<ul>
<li><a href="#about">About</a></li>
<li><a href="#projects">Projects</a></li>
<li><a href="#contact">Contact</a></li>
</ul>
</nav>
About Me
Brief intro about your background and skills.
<section id="projects">
<h2>Featured Projects</h2>
<ul>
<li>Project 1</li>
<li>Project 2</li>
<li>Project 3</li>
</ul>
</section>
<section id="contact">
<h2>Get In Touch</h2>
<p>Contact info or form goes here.</p>
</section>Fill in the content, add your styles to styles.css, and include any JavaScript you need in script.js. In your README, provide a description of the project and any additional context you want to share.
Step 4: Deploy to GitHub Pages
Once your portfolio files are ready, add them to the staging area in Git:
git add .
Then commit the changes with a descriptive message:
git commit -m "Add initial portfolio files"
Finally, push the commit up to GitHub:
git push origin main
That‘s it! Your portfolio site is now live at username.github.io. Give it a few minutes for the changes to propagate, then visit that URL to see it in action.
Auditing Your Portfolio with Lighthouse
Now that your portfolio is up and running, it‘s time to audit its quality with Google Lighthouse and see where you can improve.
Running a Lighthouse Audit
- Open your portfolio site in Google Chrome.
- Right-click anywhere on the page and select "Inspect" to open Chrome DevTools.
- Click the "Lighthouse" tab in the DevTools panel.
- Select the types of audits you want to run (select all of them to start).
- Click "Generate Report".
Lighthouse will run the selected audits and display the results in a new tab, with scores and recommendations for each category:
Click "View Original Trace" at the top to see a more detailed breakdown. You can also drill down into specific suggestions in each section to learn more about the issues detected and how to fix them.
Implementing Lighthouse Recommendations
Armed with the insights from your Lighthouse report, start working through the recommendations one by one. For example:
- Compress and optimize images to improve page load speed
- Ensure text has sufficient color contrast for accessibility
- Specify width and height attributes on image elements
- Add a meta description tag for SEO
- Set an explicit width and height on modal dialogs
Some quick wins that can boost your scores significantly:
- Minify CSS and JavaScript files
- Enable text compression
- Preload key requests
- Use efficient cache policies on static assets
- Eliminate render-blocking resources
Making small, incremental changes and re-auditing with Lighthouse after each one is a great way to track your progress and see your scores climb. Keep tweaking and tuning until you‘re happy with your scores across the board.
Advanced Portfolio Enhancements
With a solid foundation in place, here are some extra tweaks to really make your portfolio shine:
Use a Custom Domain
Registering a custom domain like firstnamelastname.com or yourname.dev gives your portfolio a professional polish. Once registered, you can configure it to point to your GitHub Pages site.
Set Up Basic Analytics
Connecting your portfolio to Google Analytics or another analytics service allows you to track page views, user demographics, acquisition channels, and other useful metrics to see how people are discovering and engaging with your site.
Add Project Demos
Embedding working demos, code samples, or video walkthroughs of your projects helps visitors better understand your capabilities and appreciate the quality of your work. You could even open-source the code for your portfolio and link to the repository!
Optimize for Different Screens
Test your portfolio on different devices and screen sizes to ensure a smooth experience across desktop, tablet, and mobile. Use responsive CSS, fluid layouts, and media queries to adapt your content accordingly.
Conclusion
Building a top-notch developer portfolio doesn‘t have to be complicated or expensive. With GitHub Pages and Lighthouse, you have everything you need to create a professional-grade portfolio that puts your best foot forward and positions you for career success.
The key takeaways:
- Use GitHub Pages for free, easy deployment of your portfolio site
- Audit your site with Lighthouse to identify areas for improvement
- Implement Lighthouse recommendations to boost performance and quality
- Add extra features like a custom domain and analytics to further enhance your portfolio
I hope this guide has inspired you to take your portfolio to the next level. Stay tuned for more tips and insights on thriving in your development career. Happy coding!